It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Displayed smack dab in the middle of the Korean flag is the Yin and Yang symbol. I find this insignia to be pretty relevant right now. Things have been very up and down as of late and I feel like I've become culturally bipolar. Either things are good or bad and I can't really find the wholeness or the peace that the Yin and Yang symbol is supposed to signify; it's just one side or the other. A year and a half ago, when I first arrived in Korea, I was amazed at everything and I reveled in it all. I tried to get that feeling back when I boomeranged back here two months ago. It didn't really work out. Listed are some of the Yins and Yangs.

Price versus Seoul Board of Education

I won't bore everyone with the details of this case. Let's just say that the outcome is clear: Price losses. That's not pessimistic, just honest. To make a long story short, a bunch of us foreign suckers, I mean teachers, got conned into teaching overtime at an English camp during winter vacation. It was a case of old fashion language barrier versus Korean bullying. We get paid some extra money so I'm not too sore, it's just that this English camp we're conducting is the equivalent of a snipe hunt; too much running around and a lot of misinformation. Us suckers went to meeting two days ago where it took and hour and a half to get people into groups. It was run by the Administrators of the Seoul School District. Two distinct thought entered my mind at this meeting:

1) How come public administrators have such a difficult time administering? It's like they've never set foot into a classroom. I don't understand how people think they can half-ass a meeting with hundreds of people.
2) I thought school meetings were bad in the states, you should see them in Korea.

The meeting was conducted by the vice principal of some public school. She knew a brief smattering of English so not much of what she said was comprehensible, but she loved to talk. As I mentioned before, the school district did some pretty underhanded things to get us to sign up for this "voluntary" English camp, so none of us were too happy to be there. Then the VP started talking about how we should not complain about the low pay, that we should be willing to sacrifice for the children. I don't even sacrifice for the children in my own country, let alone over here. Still the VP droned on. This lady could dig herself into a hole better than anyone I've ever seen. In the states most principals and VPs know that it's best to stay on the teacher's good side so they try and keep meetings brief. Nope, it's all confusion over here. Once someone with a little bit of power gets ahold of mic, they're going to impart their adminasterial wisdom. This was true with my last school as well. There were many hour long meetings where I walked out and could not recollect one thing that was talked about. I watched this woman go on about nothing in broken Konglish with a puzzled and annoyed look on my face, but only one thought was going through my head, For the love of God, make this woman stop!

We were also told, before the meeting, that the foreign English teachers would be able to choose themes for their classes. Certain theme's are story-telling, drama, singing, sports, etc. At the meeting we were informed that the Korean teachers will be choosing for us instead. If I get phonics and dancing I'm going to rub kimchi in someone's eyes. It looks like winter camp will be interesting.


The Watchers

Next week the vice principal and principal will observe all the first year teachers classes. All the Korean teachers are freaking out because they are terrified of our principal. I don't know her too well, all I know is she loves paperwork. I was given a lesson plan template to follow, the only problem is it's in Korean so it's rather hard to get right. I'm supposed to follow the template, give it to the VP and the principal and they will watch my classes. I'm cool with that but they keep wanting me to change the lesson plan to fit their format, and they don't even speak English so the lesson plan makes no sense to them in the first place.


Enter Gangchon

Last week I was all Yinned out and had to get away. Luckily Scott and Al felt the same way so we hopped on a train on Saturday and went out to Gangchon. I heard that Gangchon was "a good place for to ride a bike", as quoted by one of my coworkers, so that's what we did. We rented bikes, rode up the trail, visited some waterfalls, hiked to a small village. It was nice. It town we had lunch with a few beers. We had spotted an area that looked like a small amusement park and rode over to investigate. That's when Scott and I saw the go-cart track. It was a fairly cheap track, about 10,000 won (10 dollars) for ten minutes and Scott and I instantly jumped at the offer. I was a bit concerned that they wouldn't let us on because of the beer we had drank before. I needn't to have worried. Shortly after a party of soju swilling bank employees showed up obviously sauced.We nicknamed the drunkest Mr. Soju who then challenged us to a race, the World Cup as he called it. Our pride would not let us turn down a challenge like that and despite the track owners warnings not to go too fast, once the race started our feet never left the gas pedal. There have been some amazing times in Korea: riding the mechanical bull, seeing Scott getting sprayed by the bideu, my first no-re-bong experience and now I can add tipsy go-carts to the whole thing. I agree with my coworker: Ganchon is "a good place for to ride a bike" and much more.